Other colors, other curves

from Hemmings Classic Car

This is a visual world that we live in. Hundreds of cable TV channels and sneakers from Phat Farm or Pastry in all kinds of eye-popping bizarreness prove as much. Otherworldly looks today are often enough to stand alone, even if their shock value is imitative, as in the case of the athletic footwear brands that you see being peddled at the mall for prices that make no sense. It can be less than easy to find some context when you're looking at this sort of sales-driven eye appeal. There's color and shape, sure, but next to nothing from the realm of historical perspective, especially if you grew up wearing out pair after pair of PF Flyers.
I go elsewhere when I want to tease my rods and cones with things to see and appreciate. Literally within a few steps of our offices at Hemmings is the Bennington Museum, where the exhibits endeavor to interpret the whole experience of living in southern Vermont. I had the good fortune to take them in a couple of weeks ago, and noted one in particular.
The artifact that's most immediately relevant to the Hemmings Nation is probably the museum's Martin Wasp, the only surviving example of maybe 20 such spectacular cars that were built in Bennington--where textiles and pottery once ruled manufacturing--during the early 1920s. Its builder, Karl H. Martin, had previously designed the Duesenberg-powered Roamer, along with the Deering Electric. The Wasp was an incredible feat of engineering, eventually riding on a 144-inch wheelbase and powered by a massive Continental straight-six. The silent-screen idol Douglas Fairbanks bought one, allegedly for leading lady Mary Pickford. The problem was that nearly no one else did. Otherwise, Bennington, Vermont, might have become the United States' relative equivalent of Crewe, England.
A few steps down the hall is a gallery displaying some very different local creations. Anna Mary Robertson Moses is one of this area's most celebrated citizens--even though she never actually lived in Vermont, instead having resided in nearby eastern New York. After arthritis stopped her from embroidering, the lady better known as Grandma Moses took up the brush and palette for the very first time at age 78. Her landscapes and village views were almost childlike in their simplicity but joyfully expressive. When Grandma Moses died at 101 in 1961, she was America's most celebrated folk artist.
One building, two wonderful creations, two completely distinct disciplines. I'm mulling over the conjoined creativity behind both artifacts, as the springtime emergence of yesterday's cars is about to commence once more. To me, the works of Grandma Moses and Martin are drawn from the same well of visual appeal and individuality. So, too, are most old cars.
Do you see the same things as me when you visit a car show? Depending on its size, meaning the number of old cars on display there, you might see a geometry lesson in the angles and finish of the pre-war grille shells on display. Look at the cars of the 1950s, and try to count the number of different ways that their quarter panels are creased and lined. Or better yet, look up and down their sides, examining how many different ways the styling departments of Detroit and elsewhere discovered to convey the dynamic imagery of a missile, a jet plane, a bullet or a dashing creature of nature.
Lots of us back in the day prided ourselves on our ability to distinguish between cars by looking at their glowing taillamps from a block away at night. I recently talked to a lady who spent a lot of summery nights on her Chicago doorstep doing exactly that.
One of my numerous personal idiosyncrasies has been a fascination with the shapes and dimensions of rear windows from cars of all eras, with a special focus on the split-window varieties. I love the shellacked flip-up glass of a 1933 Ford station wagon and the 1977 Oldsmobile Toronado XSR's loony wraparound rear window--what did those things cost to make?--because, to me, both treatments are strongly appealing.
If you possess a certain sensibility for cars, the event itself may be what pulls your trigger. You know, the whole mosaic of people, glinting metal, good aromas and echoing music. Or you may fall into the category that likens a car event to an archaeological dig. You don't use a soft brush to whisk soil and dust off a broken arrowhead to make a stunning discovery. Rather, the individual sights and features that can make you sharply inhale with surprise or amazement, all those sweeps and radii and colors that nudge toward surrealism, are conveniently brought to you.
Most of all, car shows represent the kind of diversity that other staples in life only pretend to deliver. Cars from the past are artwork in motion, and they also allow history to unfold in three dimensions. They demonstrate that at one time, creative people existed who weren't afraid to make their creations personal, and who would have been horrified by the fact that today, a middle school, a shopping mall and a supermax federal prison all look pretty much alike--just like most cars do these days. Maybe that's what happens when, instead of unleashing the brilliance of a pen and a mind, automakers start relying on "product planners" who couldn't sell a mop in a flooded men's room.
You can be a serial fumbler in the world of old cars and be proud. Doesn't matter if you can't light a welding torch, much less use one. You've got two essential, irreplaceable tools. They're your eyes. They make interpretation and appreciation possible and wonderful for everybody. Get out of stir, go to a car show and use them as they were intended.

This article originally appeared in the June, 2009 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.